In recent years, advertisers and magazine editors have been widely criticized for taking digital image retouching to an extreme. Impossibly thin, tall, and wrinkle- and blemish-free models are routinely splashed onto billboards, advertisements, and magazine covers. The images, however, are often the result of digital image retouching.
Retouched images are ubiquitous and have created an idealized and unrealistic representation of physical beauty. A significant amount of literature has established a link between these images and men's and women's satisfaction with their own physical appearance. Such concern for public health has led the American Medical Association to recently adopt a policy to “discourage the altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image.” Concern for public health and for the general issue of truth in advertising has also led the United Kingdom, France, and Norway to consider legislation that would require digitally altered images to be labeled.
Popular image-editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop, allows photo editors to easily alter a person's appearance. These alterations may affect the geometry of the subject and may include slimming of legs, hips, and arms, elongating the neck, improving posture, enlarging the eyes, or making faces more symmetric. Other photometric alterations affect skin tone and texture. These changes may include smoothing, sharpening, or other operations that remove or reduce wrinkles, cellulite, blemishes, freckles, and dark circles under the eyes. A combination of geometric and photometric manipulations allows image retouchers to subtly or dramatically alter a person's appearance.